#08 by Josef Schützenhöfer

Josef Schützenhöfer (Austria)
The Austrian born artist immigrated to the United States as a young man, started his artistic career and joined the US Navy. In 1997, Schützenhöfer returned to Austria and to live on the rural Austrian countryside. His works of art have a strong social-political commitment, be it huge painted portraits of laborers or his recent long-term project “Liberation in progress” that deals with remembrance and historical rehabilitation. As Schützenhöfer noticed, almost every village in Austria has a memorial for their soldiers who died during the second world war. So the artist and activist made one for killed allied soldiers, causing outrage among politicians and residents in his hometown Pöllau.

“Foremost political
It is not the foremost role of the artist, lawyer or journalist to reside in the ivory tower and regurgitate the goods of academia.
Instead they are to focus their craft on the margins of our civil rights.
There, every day anew, they are to control the ship of state, the powers to be- to guarantee that our thoughts are not curtailed, our movements are not limited and our liberties are not blocked.”